Legal and policy implications of Uganda's social security law

Social security is an expression of social solidarity and an attempt to curb the ills of exclusion and poverty. The welfare state was premised on this very ideal of social solidarity. As a result of the changed and changing times, the welfare state which has now come to be known as social security is under siege by several forces unique to individual states. For this reason, social security is an area of rich diversity and the challenges facing social security are not homogenous. Whereas for rich and industrialized countries social security is very meaningful, for most of Sub Saharan Africa it is an abstract and relatively novel concept. The Universal Declaration for the Rights of man, to which every country should aspire and to which most, if not all, constitutions are modeled provides for the right to social security. Whereas the declaration implies that social security is an inalienable right, the definition of social security or 'western notion of social security' adopted by most countries with a semblance of social security eliminates the vast majority of people namely; those in the informal sector, the poor and those in the rural areas. Studies of social security advance the theory-that the conventional definition of social security is not adequate for the African continent because formal social security schemes were introduced in Africa during the colonial era as a response to the social security needs of expatriate white workers. In Uganda, formal social security caters for less than 20 per cent of the population leaving the rest to harness any other means possible to maintain subsistence and a level of sanity. The needs envisaged by traditional formal social security are not the needs an ordinary Ugandan today faces. As a result of this disparity, there has been and there continues to be out cries to reform a system that government has been reluctant to change much because of the multi-faceted and overwhelming social demands. The cliché that 'a drowning man clutches at a straw' could not be put better: Africans do not give up; we simply make the most of what we have.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Department of Commercial Law

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Obore, Caroline Agonzibwa

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Kalula, Evance

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/14965

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/14965